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0207 Archaeological Researches in Sinkiang : vol.1
Archaeological Researches in Sinkiang : vol.1 / Page 207 (Grayscale High Resolution Image)

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doi: 10.20676/00000195
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3) ibexes with narrow contours, 4) shallow figures in the interspaces between the rest, quite modern. Cf. Pl. XVI b. Pl. XVII c shows the righthand part. In all, this group contains some 165 figures.

Those highest situated, which also look oldest, consist of a man with spread fingers, Pl. XVII c, an archer( ?), seven low and highly conventionalized beasts, three bucks, and some fragmentary elements.

Of the long-legged animals only one or two are seen on Pl. XVII c, but the ibexes are well represented on that photo. They have been given enormous horns, a good many of them being very artistically made. Some of them have the body marked with a double line. A few camels, both "fat" and "thin", some smaller quadrupeds, and two elegantly outlined beasts running right on the right edge of the surface complete the fauna here. A few human representations (only one on Pl. XVII c) are also mixed with the animals, one of them seems to have a phallus, one carries a burden on his back, two or three are riding on horseback. There are one large footprint and four hands of the same short and broad type as on Pl. XVII b.' Two long lines may possibly be interpreted as snakes, but the meaning of some "enclosures" with dividing lines is uncertain. There is a wheel-shaped figure and possibly also a couple of tamgha signs. GRANÖ depicts some t a m g h a signs from NW Mongolia of about the same appearance (Granö 1910, Figs. 18 and 4o) and APPELGREN-KIVALO'S Plates 118, 199, 204 and 224 also show some analogies to the "enclosures".

Also on this group all the indistinct engravings and most of the modern ones could not be filled with white.

Near to the right of this group lie the six figures on Pl. XVIII a : a buck with slightly curved horns reaching to the tail, a camel, a small indeterminable beast, an ibex, a tree-like t a m g h a and a "hand" with only three fingers. They cover about one square metre.

From here onwards the cliff is more uneven and thus less suited for large groups of figures. Consequently, only scattered elements have been engraved here.

Next to the group Pl. XVIII a follows an isolated tree of the same fine execution as that of the two trees on Pl. XVI a, and situated at the same height above the brook.

About 3 im further downstream there is a man on horseback, one hand lifted. His mount is drawn as a horizontal line with four straight legs.

Below this there are an ibex and a camel, both incomplete. Then come two bucks. The last group, Pl. XVII b, is composed of two hands with very small palms, quite different from the elegantly shaped hands on Pl. XVI a. Between the hands are some

1 Among the rich and variegated rock carvings in the Swedish province of östergötland there are a few elements resembling these short and broad hands. Otherwise hand pictures seem to be missing in Sweden. They have been interpreted by NORDÉN as footprints, probably of bears (Nordén Fig. 46 and Pl. 38). The claws of these "bear's feet" are much shorter than the fingers on our hands, and I therefore prefer to call our figures hands, though they are far from naturalistic.

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